19 January 2008 a Saturday

Kind of silent as people wait for today's voting. Bush is getting ready with a stimulus package and the Democrats want to send out $250 checks hoping they will get spent and boost the economy. My advice would be to send each one a $12,000 check (a modest $1000 a month) to social security recipients, because for damn sure it will all get spent!

Meanwhile, the press is hyping the Republican side in South Carolina...the loser, they say, might as well hang up his hat and go home, even though the win may be only 51-49...still, they term it a "costly defeat" because they're scoring like baseball games, only the W-L numbers count, not the total votes or delegates.

I don't think that Hillary (or Bill, either), particularly impresses R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr:

With the leading candidates for the Democratic nomination charging each other with racial bigotry, I think it is safe to observe that 2008 will not be a progressive year in the Democratic Party. Increasingly the Clinton campaign puts me in mind of presidential campaigns waged by the late segregationist George Wallace. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton even has Wallace's surly style. Yet Wallace was rarely accused of lying. Hillary is caught lying every few days, and the lies are not even as clever as those of her mendacious husband, the sex maniac. Of course, when the fur ceases to fly over these racial charges, I think it will be clear that Hillary is not nearly the bigot Wallace was, but neither is she as nice a person. I cannot think of one of Governor Wallace's household pets disappearing under mysterious circumstances.

And Larry Thornberry points out how silly some of the early "primary" votes are, on the whole:

Interestingly enough (to me, at least), I'm discovering which candidate I actually prefer by, what would you call it, osmosis? I'm finding that I react differently to various news items about the various candidates, and I'm coming to realize that I find myself defending the negative McCain items and feeling good about the positive ones, more so than the other candidates. I guess that much mean I'm for McCain at this moment, at least. Dean Barnett has a possible explanation why:

Interestingly, Republicans would universally welcome Lieberman's presence in the party. Some even feel he would make an ideal nominee for vice president. If the party would so eagerly embrace Lieberman, wouldn't it make sense for party regulars to overlook McCain's various heresies? After all, by any objective measure, John McCain is a much more conservative politician than Joe Lieberman.

And yet there's something about McCain, isn't there? Yes, I'm a Romney guy and have been since 1994, but it's not just supporters of McCain's opponents who often find McCain irksome. McCain has an uncanny ability to drive virtually all conservatives nuts.

I've always found the "true" conservatives, or the capital-C Conservatives to range somewhere between a rating of 'irritating' to 'pain in the ass', so there's something in me which finds driving conservatives nuts to be quite amusing. And despite the problems his presence would pose for us in attempting to broker any deal in the Middle East, I would not be at all unhappy with Lieberman as VP, because I think he's a decent, honorable man, despite his politics.

As for McCain, in my book a lifetime American Conservative Union rating of 82.3 is not exactly peanuts. Nothing in this is to say that I agree with all of McCain's positions, but you can reasonably make that argument about every single candidate out there.

I'm re-reading my collection of Spenser detective novels, and just this morning Spenser was saying:

Spenser usually has a good point of his own and on this we think a lot alike here. What's that? Not anyone? No...no, not even St Reagan. Actually, Bush comes a lot closer that most, in my book, but it's hard to find out what Bush really thinks after he's been filtered through the hostile press. For instance, I know a lot of people who read the LA Times the morning after Bush's 2003 SOTU and saw them tell the world that Bush said Saddam represented an imminent danger. He didn't, of course, but thousands and perhaps millions read that account of his speech in the papers and now that's what they believe.

Speaking on the subject of political attitudes, here's a Jonathan V. Last item on Obama that I never heard before:

A few minutes after Obama took the stage, a group of about a dozen protesters in the balcony interrupted him, chanting, "Abortion is abomination!" This sort of thing happens all the time at political events. Sometimes the intruders are the "community of peacemakers" who call themselves Code Pink, sometimes they're LaRouchies. When anti-abortion folks disrupt an event, the response is usually the same: The pro-abortion audience heckles the banner-wielding protesters; the speaker tosses off a barb or two; security escorts the demonstrators away; and the audience cheers, partly in self-satisfaction, partly in derision at the rubes who think babies are not choices.

But at the Obama event, something extraordinary happened. The protesters chanted "Abortion is abomination!" Obama lost his place in his speech and stared up into the balcony, looking to see who was interrupting him. The crowd began booing lustily, and suddenly Obama turned on them.

"There's no need to boo," he chastised them. After silencing the crowd, Obama turned back to the protesters and said he appreciated their point and would be happy to talk with them afterwards if they'd let him finish his speech. The protesters continued, and the crowd, thinking Obama simply didn't want them to be negative, tried shouting them down, chanting "Obama! Obama!"

At which point Obama turned on them again. "Hold up," he commanded. "This is an example of nobody hearing each other." The Obama partisans desisted once more. The anti-abortion chanters continued, and Obama tried to engage them. "For the folks who are opposed to abortion, I understand your position, but this isn't going to solve anything," he said plaintively. He gave them time to make their point, and eventually they were led away.

The crowd cheered wildly as the demonstrators were taken down the back staircase by the local police, and here Obama cut through the applause to lecture them one final time. "Let me just say this, though," he said. "Those people got organized to do that. And that is part of the American tradition we are proud of. And that's hard, too--standing in the midst of people who don't agree with you and letting your voice be heard." The audience, a bit stunned, didn't quite know what to make of this.

I didn't either. From my point of view, it would be much better if Barack Obama were willing to help protect the lives of the unborn. Still, his treatment of those protesters--and especially his treatment of his own supporters--spoke to his intellectual seriousness and his temperament, both of which seem to be first rate.

Although I prefer virtually any of the likely Republican nominees, with McCain my first choice at this time, he sure made me feel a lot better about the possibility of Obama, I have to say that.

Sometime back in the 1990s, when the culture wars were the only ones we thought we had going, a cartoon showed three coworkers viewing each other with narrowed and questioning eyes. "Those whites don't know how to deal with a competent black man," the black man is thinking. "Those guys don't know how to deal with a powerful woman," the woman is thinking. And what could the only white male have been thinking? "They don't like me. They know that I'm gay."

So far as we know, there are no gays in the mixture today...

On the equal-opportunity side (and I feel no urge to play that role) there's this great line also from the above:

As mayor of New York City Giuliani ejected Yasser Arafat from Lincoln Center when he crashed a private event held in connection with the UN's fiftieth anniversary. In the face of the Clinton administration's criticism of him for his action, Mayor Giuliani responded:

[T]he Mayor, explaining his decision yesterday, called Mr. Arafat a murderer and terrorist, and said he was not impressed by the fact that Mr. Arafat had twice been invited to the White House to sign the Middle East peace accords, or that he shared the Nobel Peace Prize.

"I would not invite Yasir Arafat to anything, anywhere, anytime, anyplace," Mr. Giuliani said at a news conference yesterday. "I don't forget."

I have to admit that Hillary did say just about this, however, in one of her rare honest moments.

Every now and then you come across something that is so obviously stupid that you cannot understand how it has been going on for so long without people objecting. This Townhall item is like that for me:

The Department of Homeland Security will tighten identification requirements to cross the border, despite opposition from Democrats in Congress, by the end of this month.

“We’re going to eliminate the vulnerabilities that we can eliminate now even with Congress delaying our initiative,” said Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff in a phone interview with Townhall on Thursday.

As of January 31, DHS will end the practice of “oral declarations” and significantly narrow the list of acceptable forms of identification that can be used to enter the United States.

“We are not going to allow people any more to make what we call oral declarations at the border,” Chertoff said. “And what that means is someone just walks up to the border and says ‘I am an American’ and they are just waived through without looking at any identification. It may surprise you that that ever happened but apparently for some period of time, particularly when things get busy, agents do not require identification for everyone that is coming through. We’re ending that. There is no excuse for that.”

DHS found 31,060 instances of oral false claims between October 2004 and September 2007.

I have two reactions. (1) Do you mean that this long after 9/11 people have just been walking in saying hello, I'm an American? Is this some kind of cruel joke? (2) And Congress is objecting to tighter identification requirements? Is this some kind of cruel joke?

No wonder the terrorists expect to win. With a genius like this lady defending the borders, only stupid terrorists can get in. Does she think all terrorists have high IQs? Hi, folks, Louise here...aptly named Slaughter, as in "lambs to the", get it, ha ha...don't worry, you can only be killed by a terrorist dumber than I am and they're hard to find. I just asked everyone in line if they were a terrorist and they assured me they were not. Why, one nice fellow only wanted to enter the US in order to pay an overdue fine on his library card! Now I ask you, folks, what would a terrorist ever want with a library card?

The BEST thing he can hope for will still leave the doors wide open for another year and a half? No, don't laugh: weep.

Poor Mr Chertoff, innocent as a newborn lamb. Mr Chertoff? Trust me, you are Bush are going to get blamed for the consequences, you can count on that! You are going to get blamed for the things you did do that some thing you should not have, and blamed for the things you did not do that others think you should have. And, long after you are gone, the then-current office holders are going to blame you for screwing things up so badly that they couldn't get them fixed in time, although they strained themselves mightily in the effort.

George Will gives you an example of what I think of is a Conservative wigging out:

In ABC's New Hampshire debate, McCain said: "Why shouldn't we be able to reimport drugs from Canada?" A conservative's answer is:

That amounts to importing Canada's price controls, a large step toward a system in which some medicines would be inexpensive but many others -- new pain-relieving, life-extending pharmaceuticals -- would be unavailable. Setting drug prices by government fiat rather than market forces results in huge reductions of funding for research and development of new drugs. McCain's evident aim is to reduce pharmaceutical companies' profits. But if all those profits were subtracted from the nation's health care bill, the pharmaceutical component of that bill would be reduced only from 10 percent to 8 percent -- and innovation would stop, taking a terrible toll in unnecessary suffering and premature death. When McCain explains that trade-off to voters, he will actually have engaged in straight talk.

Of course, it would be nothing amounting to importing Canada's price controls than it would be if every time we buy stuff from China we are importing their labor and product laws. By the time that Canada or China are offering their goods for sale on the open market, that's all that the buyer is buying. If a Canadian pharmacist wants to charge me $5 for a pill that a U.S. pharmacist wants $10 for, the cash difference isn't going back to the pharmaceutical company as profits to be used for their R&D. The pharma corporation made what they thought was an adequate profit on the deal when they sold the drugs to Canada or else they wouldn't have struck the deal.

A conservative should see the free market in action, because the Canadian government imposing price controls does not control the behavior of the pharmaceutical company, forcing it to sell its products to Canadians. Actually, what should happen in the event of price controls for Canadians is that the big drug companies would simply choose not to sell to them any more because they could get higher prices elswwhere.

Instead, the drug company considers that once they've blanketed the high-priced U.S. market they're happy to sell at a lower profit-margin to Canada...because the U.S. government is the one who will effectively control the prices by not allowing Americans to re-import the drugs at a lower price.

And the people paying the biggest price are the Americans who are prohibited from buying on the open market all over the world. There is where your government interference comes in. Here in Costa Rica I find that some drugs cost me less than in the U.S. but others cost me much more, and particularly more than if I bought them from Canadians willing to sell them to me. (Why don't I do that? Frankly, our mail system is not trustworthy enough to ensure delivery, in my opinion.)

In all cases, though, the drug companies charged their buyers a price that the drug companies were willing to accept. The same free market that says they can sell for whatever price they choose should also say that I have the right to buy from any of their customers, because once the drugs and money change hands the first time their deal is done.

George is mad about McCain-Feingold, as he has every right to be, as well as McCain's stupid intolerance about the actual facts (or lack thereof) of global warming, another very good point, Hey, I don't like them, either...but who else has a complete program I can endorse whole-heartedly? Heck, I'm not even positive I can endorse all of my own.

I couldn't help but think of my Dean Barnett column, earlier, where I quoted him as saying "McCain has an uncanny ability to drive virtually all conservatives nuts" as I read this Ann Coulter column, deriding McCain while promoting her candidate, Romney. She begins by assailing McCain, like this:

Assuming any actual Republicans are voting for McCain -- or for liberals' new favorite candidate for us, Mike Huckabee -- this column is for you.

I've been casually taking swipes at Mitt Romney for the past year based on the assumption that, in the end, Republicans would choose him as our nominee. My thinking was that Romney would be our nominee because he is manifestly the best candidate.

I had no idea that Republican voters in Iowa and New Hampshire planned to do absolutely zero research on the candidates and vote on the basis of random impulses.

...Giuliani cleverly avoids the heinous "flip-flopper" label by continuing to embrace baby-killing. (Rudy flip-flops only on trivial matters like illegal immigration and his own marital vows.)

And, of course, Romney is a Mormon. Even a loser Mormon like Sen. Harry Reid claims to be pro-life. So having a candidate with a wacky religion isn't all bad.

At worst, Romney will turn out to be a moderate Republican -- a high-IQ, articulate, moral, wildly successful, moderate Republican. Of the top five Republican candidates for president, Romney is the only one who hasn't dumped his first wife (as well as the second, in the case of Giuliani) -- except Huckabee. And unlike Huckabee, Romney doesn't have a son who hanged a dog at summer camp. ...

... Whatever problems Romney's Mormonism gives voters, remember: Bill Clinton came in third in heavily Mormon Utah in 1992.

I sort of get the impression she wishes she hadn't been so cute about her Romney swipes, almost acknowledging that she wrote them just to get attention, but the last seems almost, as Barnett said, nuts. From Rudy's baby-killing, to Harry Reid's being a "loser Mormon" (I'm not at all sure what she means by that) to Huckabee's son and Bill Clinton's finish in Utah, she almost sounds like she's arguing we should elect Romney because he's the one she dislikes the least.

It doesn't matter what you think of your candidate, merely do the opposite of what the liberals want. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. Yeah, if I didn't think Barnett had a point before this, I do now. And I'm an Ann Coulter fan, too.

Douglas MacKinnon also writes a somewhat incoherent column but at least this part resonated:

“Hate her!” So said actress and liberal activist Susan Sarandon a few years ago about fellow liberal Hillary Clinton.

A well-known self-described liberal Democrat in Hollywood once said that the thing that bothered him most about some of his fellow liberals was their “hate.” It’s not enough, he said, “that they disagree with Republicans and conservatives, but they have to hate them and hate everything they stand for.”

Over the last seven years, a large number of these liberal activists, actors, and entertainers, have professed their outright hatred of George W. Bush. Through their rants in columns, in books, and on television and radio, they have spewed varying degrees of unhinged loathing of this president.

That certainly seems to be true. I wasn't a fan of Bill Clinton, nor am I of Hillary, but I certainly don't feel anything close to 'hate' for either of them. I have disgust for Teddy Kennedy and distaste for Reid and Nancy Pelosi and contempt for Schumer, but I certainly don't hate them and everything they stand for, because Joe Lieberman stands for a great many of those same things and I like him quite a bit. I guess what bothers me most about them is that they'll preach virtue while simultaneously practicing vice, but covertly. They'll say one thing to your face but another behind your back or when you aren't present, then go back to smiling and shaking hands when you reappear. They call this politics, which makes it okay, but it would be extreme to think that I could work myself all the way up into any passionate feeling like hatred.

I think the difference with liberals has to be that they take everything so personally that any disagreement with them turns into something much more intense than that. For instance, the newspapers (admittedly staffed by about 90% of self-identified liberals) love to describe as "attack" ads any political advertising in which the candidate says anything about his opponents record, even when completely true.

For instance, if Romney points out that McCain voted against Bush's tax cuts, which is perfectly true, this is nevertheless labeled as an attack ad. Come on, guys, get a grip.

I still hear from people who hotly describe Bush as either an idiot or a moron, at a minimum, despite the fact that he somehow graduated from both Yale and Harvard and somehow learned how to fly a single-seat jet fighter, facts which seem not to deter their opinion in the slightest. For them, though, mangled syntax or even any kind of human goof is evidence enough, although simply holding a different opinion than theirs also qualifies. Mere disagreement is completely inadequate for them.

Here's another guy who McCain drives nuts! After citing a laundry-list of supposed McCain faults, many of which are easily debatable by an unbiased observer and some seem to be deliberately misstated (such as "wants to coddle captured terrorists" because McCain thinks waterboarding is torture), he writes:

Well, in the first place the fact that his match-ups looks good means it doesn't matter a whole lot if you get despondent or not...but who would want the support of a bunch of weaklings like you guys, anyhow? Despondent? My, how effetely liberal. Do you get the vapors, too?

Then there's the illegal immigration issue, which was the biggest domestic issue of 2007 and figures to be an enormous emotional issue in 2008. John McCain does not represent the position of most Republicans on illegal immigration. To the contrary, he has a position that is functionally identical to that of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

So here's a little "straight talk" for you: having John McCain lose in 2008, because he's pro-amnesty, would probably scare Congress so badly that they wouldn't even consider voting on a path to citizenship before 2013, while a John McCain victory would signal to Congress that they can go ahead and proceed with amnesty, because conservatives don't care about the issue very much.

Now, am I saying that Republicans should vote for a third party or stay home if John McCain is the nominee? Absolutely not. I don't believe in protest votes and besides, the presidency is bigger than any one issue.

What's that? You need to sit down because you are feeling a little dizzy? I don't blame you. If this guy is passionately against amnesty, then by his own argument he should hope McCain loses. On the other hand, though, he admits, any one issue doesn't really matter all that much...

The presidency, he says, is bigger than that. Like, the president should be hawkish, fiscally conservative, and pro-life...just not John McCain.

It's enough to make anyone positively despondent! Another latte, anyone, or perhaps some white wine in which to drown our sorrows?

Here's an outstanding column by Larry Elder, with the caveat that I believe what he describes refers to 'conservatives' and 'liberals' rather than Republicans and Democrats, since there are liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats and all sorts of in-between types. Furthermore, there's a lot of difference in the intensity with which some of us believe different aspects on this list, they aren't all equal in weight.

For what it's worth, on a liberal-to-conservative scale of 1-to-10, I'd say that I would be a 7 or 8.

What Republicans Believe, What Democrats Believe

Republicans believe hard work wins, and government should allow you -- to the fullest extent possible -- to keep what you earn. Democrats believe that success results from luck, chance and happenstance, and therefore a just government takes from those who have and gives to those who do not.

Republicans believe in a colorblind society determined by drive, work ethic and talent. Democrats want a color-coordinated society. This explains the support for race and gender-based preferences to "correct" past sins and to create "diversity."

Republicans believe discrimination to fix previous discrimination remains discrimination, and that all a government can be is just in its own time. Democrats wish to use government to "rectify" past wrongs, which they hold responsible for today's "inequities."

This isn't as easy as it sounds if you consider it from a legal rather than a racial standpoint. For instance, even conservatives recognize that if someone does something to damage another person, recompense is due under the law. And we recognize that government cannot take property and property rights away from individuals without paying adequate compensation for the taking. The legal question, then, would be the extent to which any 'taking' had been uncompensated, if such were the case. However, it also seems reasonable to think that the government should be responsible for only its own actions, not that of governments long passed away, and that there has to be some reasonable way to ascribe an appropriate amount of damage to be remedied. The real parting of the ways is over whether or not the damages should be inherited...for instance, if some unknown somewhere in your unknown ancestry was a slave, whether compensation for that fact should accrue to today's heirs. Conservatives definitely say no to that one.

Republicans believe that government should empower the individual -- that a government that taxes least taxes best. Democrats want individuals to empower government, and support policies that redistribute income from person A to "deserving" person B.

Republicans believe that the playing field, while unlevel, requires an individual to do the best he or she can with the cards dealt. Democrats consider life rigged, and that one's destiny rests on matters beyond the control of the individual.

Republicans believe that those who cannot help themselves can and will be helped out by other individuals -- not government -- as a result of basic human compassion. Democrats believe that because of one's misfortune, he or she is entitled to something -- via government -- from someone else.

Again, that depends upon the source of the misfortune as well as the nature of it, but generally I'd agree with that.

Republicans believe in peace through strength, and thus support strong national defense, and -- in this era of Islamofascism -- a proactive foreign policy. Democrats believe in strength through peace, and believe they can better influence the behavior of enemies by demonstrating our good intentions.

Republicans believe in the mutual benefits of free trade of goods and services. Democrats believe in "fair trade," and support barriers that shield domestic industries against competition, reducing the incentive to innovate and change to remain competitive.

Unfortunately, Republicans seem to honor this more in the breach than the observance. But what would the Interstate Commerce Commission do if free trade meant no shields allowed?

Again a brush too broad, because the Constitution itself provides for a means by which it can be changed, recognizing from the very beginning that everything contained therein was not immutable but subject to change with the times. It's just that conservatives feel that the Constitutional provision is the correct way to go about it, not via the courts. The people should vote on how they want the laws under Roe v. Wade applied, not the justices.

Another tough one. The 2nd says that the right "shall not be infringed"...but what does 'infringed' mean? We certainly accept that convicted felons should not be allowed to own guns, for instance. And the right was to "keep and bear", which might be interpreted that you don't need a "carry permit" for arms, concealed or otherwise. It might also mean that anything bigger than a man can carry is prohibitable...but we also don't think it reasonable to allow people to keep and bear hand grenades, for instance. Clearly we think that some kinds of infringement are acceptable.

However, despite these questions, one thing we do know for sure: any law that says flatly that we cannot keep and bear arms of any kind at all is clearly unconstitutional.

Michigan, six years ago, became one of about 40 "shall issue" states that now allow citizens to apply for a permit to carry concealed weapons. At the time, law enforcement officials predicted an increase in violent crime. In fact, the opposite happened.

Woodhaven Police Chief Michael Martin said, "I think the general consensus out there from law enforcement is that things were not as bad as we expected. There are problems with gun violence, but I think we can breathe a sigh of relief that what we anticipated didn't happen."

So how did the president of the Michigan chapter of the anti-gun group Million Moms March respond? She called the statistics bogus, and argued that even if true, society still possesses too many guns.

And this brings us to our final observation:

Republicans believe what they see, and Democrats see what they believe.

We had reminded readers yesterday that President Bush's final State of the Union address will be delivered on Monday, Jan. 28, at 9 p.m.

Now we are reminded of a popular pastime held each year, "The State of the Union Drinking Game 2008."

Organizers say: "If all goes well, you'll be unconscious by the time they show the other party's response."

New rules will be in place this year, but last year, every time the president said "Mahmoud Ahmadinejad," players had to take two gulps of their chosen beverage, and swallow a third if Mr. Bush pronounced the Iranian president's name correctly.

In addition, players had to take one shot of extra-virgin olive oil every time Mr. Bush said "addicted to oil," as well as one shot of tequila when he said "illegal immigration."

...the 22 states voting and caucusing on Feb. 5 operate under systems that award one-third of their delegates to the winners of the state, and two-thirds to the winner of each congressional district within the state.

The states use proportional representation, meaning that in a close contest, one candidate might get four delegates, the other three.

For instance: Iowa’s caucuses – for narrative purposes a stunning Obama victory – awarded Obama 16 delegates, Clinton 15, and Edwards 14.

Clinton’s "game-changing" New Hampshire win got her and Obama nine delegates each, and Edwards four.

Early reports from Nevada tonight are that Hillary won, but Obama got 13 delegates to her 12 because of their rules.

So Hillary is ahead 2-1 in wins in those three states, but behind in delegates 36-38, and only delegates count.